Open Your Eyes
by JadeKaiser
Summary: To a World Full of Death. Even with the loss of my country, of my family, of my princess, I refuse to submit to Reconquista. Even when the Church condemns me, I will never stop fighting, I will never stop protecting, for I am Louise Francois de la Valliere, and I Am Death. Oneshot.


**Just a oneshot that branches off from an unwritten story idea I've had for a while now. The italicized, non-underlined bits and words would be in invisitext, but that doesn't work on this site. Imagine that those parts are thoughts that Louise refuses to acknowledge.**

►Story Start◄

No matter what happened, no matter even with her family scattered _dead?_ , she would never submit. Her country was gone, but that was no excuse. Her Princess _friend_ , first disgraced by a traitor _even though the accusations of infidelity were half true_ then slaughtered in the invasion, had charged the safety of the loyal people of Tristain to her safekeeping.

 _Open your eyes, to a world full of death._

With the Valliere's relation to the royal family and the death of the last royal of the main line, that charge made her the rightful heir to the throne of Tristain. She didn't like to think about it. _Not like there was a Tristain left to rule now, anyway._

It was more important that she protect who she could by making sure they didn't bite off more than they could chew in their resistance towards Reconquista, and by taking what she could onto herself alone. They were almost the entire population of the country, so running was impossible. The thought of submitting to the Albionian rebel nobles was utterly foreign; the Tristain monarchy was well loved, and many of the nobles were notably less so.

 _Watch as they gasp, as they give their last breath._

Louise let out a slow breath as she opened her eyes. The black death-lines only she could see since her childhood were layered over everything in her sight. Even the Reconquista airship in the sky above her was not exempt.

It was odd, how far she had come since the Academy. Oh, for the days when all she had to worry about were her constant failures at traditional magic; the days when she could just pretend to ignore the death-lines and didn't have to worry about the responsibility she now had heaped on her shoulders.

She was good at it, she knew. Eleanor had inherited their mother's incredible skill with traditional magic. Cattelya had inherited her rarely seen softer, gentler side (and though she was loathe to admit it for all the love she held toward her sister, sometimes Louise felt that Cattelya had inherited most of Louise's and Eleanor's fair shares of bust size as well). Louise, on the other hand, had inherited the things that were most important of all in these times: Karin de la Valliere's incredible talent in the art of battle _killing_ , war, and possibly even for leading others.

 _Do you go on? Do you kill with the best?_

She focused, envisioning how the overwhelmingly pure _empty_ flow of her magic flew towards the ship in a tapestry of tiny black threads, much like the death-lines to her eyes. The way she used magic was non-Brimiric _heretical_ , but she no longer cared. The Brimiric system had discarded and trampled on her anyway. That was proven when she was expelled from the academy for her inability to even summon a familiar. Perhaps it was for the best; a familiar would not have helped her in these times.

When her threads finally made contact with the death-lines of the ship and came taught she began plucking them one by one, much like the strings of a harp. Each one as it vibrated split the ship above her like the skin of a ripe fruit along one of its death-lines before seeking out a new target and tightening, ready to be plucked once more. The pieces of the airship fell in ruins as she played them, some landing less than two hundred yards from her hiding place.

 _Or do you stand back, and let life do the rest?_

Louise envisioned the power of her magic making her stronger, faster, better by far than should be humanly possible, and surged towards the wreckage. There would be no survivors left before long; she had played her strings far too well when they were far too high for that. War was not kind, and she knew she would receive no more mercy from them were their positions reversed. Nevertheless, there was value to be had in whatever she could salvage for herself and her followers, and so she let out a piercing note to signal that they should come help with the search.

They might never retake their country properly, but if nothing else they would make it too hot for the rebels to comfortably hold.

►End◄

 **Louise's powers here are crossed over from two different fandoms. One should be obvious what it is, but I bet nobody can figure out the other one.**

 **The poem is something that I came up with just for this, and it kind of feels incomplete, but it's my first foray into the domain of poetry anyway. There's no particular deep meaning attached to it, I just tried to make something that rhymed based on the first line that continued to fit this oneshot.**


End file.
